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  “Hello.” I stiffly walked up to him, “Here I am.”

  “I’m glad you came after all.”

  “Sorry it took so long.” I stared into his eyes, sinking into that sea of deep blue, hoping our talk would clear away any bad blood between us. That he wouldn’t hate me for the rest of his life.

  “No problem.” He looked over my shoulder. The bell chimed as it had when I opened the door. When I spun around, my heart skipped a beat

  53

  Erdie and Konstantin entered the copy shop and stopped right in front of the closed door. My heart plummeted, and an icy cold chill crept up my spine. “What…” I turned to Ben. “What is this? Why is Konstantin here?” My voice grew higher with each word.

  “You wouldn’t have come if you’d have seen him in here,” Ben said with frightening calmness.

  I had walked into a trap!

  “No.” I began shaking my head as if in slow motion. Mortal fear seized me, constricting my throat like a python. I walked slowly backwards until I felt one of the copy machines against my back and couldn’t go any further. My pulse picked up. There was no way I could get out of here.

  “Please, Ben,” I sobbed in a desperate attempt to appeal to his empathy and could no longer hold back the tears. They ran down my cheeks, one after the other, and kept flowing. “Please let me go. Please…” My voice cracked as my chest slowly contracted, and I couldn’t breathe; I was starting to hyperventilate. Gasping for breath, I stared at the three impassive faces. “I didn’t mean to tell Ellen. It just slipped out. Really. I swear I wasn’t gonna tell her anything. I won’t tell anybody else, I promise. Never. But please, just let me go. Please!” I gasped for breath as Ben started walking towards me slowly with an indecipherable expression on his face. What was he going to do?

  “Luca,” he said softly and came very close. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of me.”

  I put a hand in front of my eyes because I didn’t know what else to do. “Please don’t hurt me. Please, Ben. Please let me go.”

  Ben took me in his arms and pulled me gently to his chest. “Nobody here’s gonna hurt you.”

  “What did you do to her, you son of a bitch?” I heard Erdie’s furious voice, but I couldn’t move a muscle. With my eyes closed, I leaned against Ben, wanting to hide in his arms even though I had no idea what he was going to do next. But anything was better than having to look into Konstantin’s ice-cold eyes.

  “I didn’t do anything at all to that stupid cunt,” he said, his voice sounding as hard as always.

  I shivered in Ben’s arms. “Make him go away, please make him go away,” I begged Ben as I clung to his shirt.

  Ben stroked my back. “I’ll send him away,” he whispered to calm me down. “I promise. But first, Konstantin has something to tell you.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything, just make him go away.”

  “Luca,” Ben replied in a soft voice, holding me by the upper arms. “You have to hear this from him in person, so you can find closure to get on with your life.” Gently, he pushed me away, although I was still clutching his shirt. With one hand, he wiped the tears from my cheeks before he turned me around to look directly into Konstantin’s disgusting face. Ben held me tightly and supported me from behind. Ben’s closeness helped me to face him, but I was still shaking all over. The star-shaped mole on Konstantin’s cheek looked like the devil’s mark.

  Erdie grabbed Konstantin by the neck. “Say what you have to say and then fuck off.”

  Konstantin batted his hand away. “Don’t touch me, man. Well, Luca, your little homepage is offline now, but I don’t give a shit. I got sick of looking at your tits, anyway. But you could be a bit more grateful. After all, I made you an internet star.” He flashed his oh-so-familiar mean grin, and I realized he was playing all of us. That guy would never stop. Why was Ben interfering in this?

  “Watch your big mouth,” Ben interjected. “Your ugly mug is just screaming to get smashed.”

  Erdie grabbed Konstantin by the neck and shoved him roughly face-first against the wall.

  “Alright, alright,” Konstantin grunted. “The video has been deleted from my hard drive, and this jerk-off has the USB flash drive backup.” He pointed at Ben, who instead of answering, smiled menacingly.

  Erdie pulled Konstantin off the wall, only to slam him against it one more time. “There’s more to say.” He reminded him. “And if you talk more shit, what I’m doing to you right now will feel like nothing.”

  My knees went wobbly, like softened butter, and nearly gave way a couple of times. I couldn’t keep from slumping. Ben wrapped his arms around my waist and held me tighter.

  “I’m leaving this shithole,” Konstantin said with another groan. “I already had that in mind anyway. I’m moving back to Munich, so fuck you all.” He turned to Erdie. “Get your dirty hands off me now.”

  Erdie let go, adding: “I’d really love to give you a…”

  “Now, fuck off,” Ben growled like a pit bull, full of hate. “Don’t show your ugly face here ever again.”

  Konstantin swallowed before he reached for the doorknob.

  “And don’t forget,” Erdie called after him. “I have tons of friends in Munich. If you pull any more crap with Luca, they’ll pay you a visit. And they’re not squeamish, I can promise you that much.”

  For the first time, something like fear flickered in Konstantin’s eyes. “The slut’s all yours,” he said, which earned him a painful kick in the backside from Erdie, and Konstantin hurried out of the shop.

  “Are you alright?” Ben loosened his grip on me and stroked my cheek with his knuckles.

  “Yes.” I swallowed, propping myself against the copy machine. The room was spinning around me. “I guess, but…” I let my gaze wander between the two guys. “How did you get Konstantin here? Caro saw you talking to him earlier at the Havana Bar.”

  Ben shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no hiding anything from you two, is there? Unbelievable.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, while my pulse gradually slowed.

  Erdie shrugged. “You’d better tell her the whole story. After all, she has a right to know.”

  “Okay.” Ben ran both hands through his hair. “When you told me the story about Konstantin, I immediately wanted to find that asshole and beat him up. At the same time, I hated myself for not being able to talk to you about it. I knew you needed me that day, otherwise you wouldn’t have confided in me. But I was afraid of getting too involved and making things worse—like I did at the festival,” he added, shrugging his shoulders apologetically. “That’s why I got up and went to my room instead.” He looked at me piercingly, as if it was important to him that I understood his reaction. When I nodded, he went on.

  “Then I sat down at my laptop and Googled your full name. That page came up as the first hit…”

  “No,” I interrupted him in horror. I didn’t want to hear any more and covered my ears. “Please don’t say you watched the video. I couldn’t take that.”

  “Hey, Luca.” Erdie patted my back. “You’re not the bad guy here, that jerk is.”

  Meanwhile, Ben lifted my chin, so I’d to look him in the eyes. “I clicked on the page.”

  My heart almost stopped when he said that.

  “Konstantin had even installed a hit counter. The page had been visited over seventy-five thousand times.”

  That horrible news took a moment to sink in. Tens of thousands of complete strangers had seen me naked and watched me have sex! I just wanted to die. “Did… Did you…” I couldn’t finish the question for fear of Ben’s answer.

  “I didn’t watch it,” he reassured me. “Of course not. But I did hack the website. The security measures on it were extremely low, then I broke it down until there was nothing left of it.”

  “Really?” The immense pressure on my chest loosened.

  “Yes.” He rubbed my arm. “Would you believe it, only a few days later he’d built a new site? And I realiz
ed, he’d never stop if we didn’t put some pressure on him, so I filled Erdie in on the situation.” He nodded at him.

  “When Ben told me about the crap that jackass pulled on you, I was right in. We wanted to get the bastard, but we needed reinforcements. So, I called in my brothers.”

  “They—they all know?” I started to feel queasy.

  “No details,” Ben reassured me. “I called Konstantin and asked him under false pretenses to meet me at the Havana Bar. Erdie and his brothers told him they’d be paying him a visit if he didn’t do as we told him.”

  “My brothers would never even hurt a fly, but Cengiz’ ghetto talk is really convincing.” Erdie struck a cool pose and imitated his brother. “Here’s the deal, you fuckin’ piece of shit, you be comin’ at that girl again, we be puttin’ your dumb ass in the fuckin’ hospital. You feel me? I ain’t playin’.”

  Despite myself, I burst out laughing, while Ben slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Perfect, bro.” Then he turned back to me.

  “So, we all went over to his place earlier,” Ben continued explaining. “We made him take the thing offline. I also deleted the video from his hard drive and made him hand over the backup.”

  “And you still have it?” I asked.

  He fished an USB flash drive from his jeans pocket and handed it over to me. “You can do with it whatever you want.”

  I stared intently at the silver flash drive in Ben’s hand, transfixed; it looked so harmless. Hard to imagine how much damage this tiny object could cause. Anger rose inside me, an overpowering rage at Konstantin’s deviousness and at the crap on that drive. I grabbed the damn thing, threw it on the ground, and smashed it to smithereens with my heel. I exhaled loudly. That felt so, so good. My heart was beating rapidly in my chest.

  The two guys had quietly watched me.

  “It’s all gone now.” Ben looked at the pieces on the ground. “You have nothing to be afraid of anymore. It’s all over.”

  “How can I ever thank you guys?”

  “It’s alright,” Ben replied. “Anything for a friend.” He elbowed me gently.

  Erdie scratched the back of his head. “Maybe you could watch Phyllis again sometime.” His grin got wider. “She keeps asking about you.”

  “Anytime, and not just because you guys saved my butt. I love that little girl.”

  We stood there smiling at each other. It was like a weight had been lifted off of me, and I felt like I could breathe freely for the first time in years. I could never ever repay the guys for what they had done for me, and yet I’d been so mean to Ben.

  “I’m really sorry about that thing with Ellen,” I said, hoping he would be able to forgive me.

  “And that’s my cue to go.” Erdie turned toward the door. “I think you two have a lot more things to talk about.”

  “Thanks for everything.” I hugged Erdie, who held me close for a second.

  “You can stop with the thank yous now,” he grumbled and opened the door to leave.

  “Erdie.” There was one more thing bothering me. “Now you know the whole story… But I wish you didn’t.”

  “Oh, Shorty,” he replied with his signature jab to my chin. “You know what a crappy memory I have.” Erdie waved goodbye and pulled the door closed behind him.

  54

  I turned to face Ben.

  “About Ellen,” I began cautiously, but he interrupted me.

  “I don’t care about what Ellen says. I’ve known her for a while now, and I know how she thinks.”

  “What happened between you two? Why does she hate you so much?”

  A tight smile emerged on his lips. “Why don’t we go back to the office? We can sit down and talk there.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. He locked the front door before he pointed to the back room. I followed him into the tiny office and looked around quickly. So, this was where Ben worked. A filing cabinet filled with binders leaned against one of the walls with a desk next to it, cluttered with pens and papers. Ben offered me the office chair, but instead, I perched on the desk so I could look into his face.

  “You take the chair,” I said, swinging my legs, but Ben remained standing in front of me.

  “You wanted to know what’s going on between me and Ellen.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I met Ellen a few years ago in a bar and took her home to sleep with me.” Ben faltered, and I felt my eyes grow large. “When we arrived, Toby was still up. It was obvious that he fell in love with Ellen right then and there, on the spot. So, we hung out for a little while in the kitchen, talking. When Ellen went to the bathroom, Toby asked me to back off and let him have a go at her.” Ben took a bottle of water from the desk, unscrewed the cap, and offered it to me. When I declined, he took a big sip before he went on. “I didn’t care about Ellen; I just wanted to spend the night with her. So, I took off and left the two of them to it, because Toby was really serious about her, and I wanted to give him a chance to try his luck.” He grimaced. “From that point on, they were inseparable. But every time Ellen got the chance, she freaked out, accusing me of passing her on to my friend like an unwanted toy and all that nonsense. Nothing ever happened between us, but she never forgave me, despite the fact that Toby’s the better catch by a long shot. I don’t know any man who could put up with her moods as patiently as he does.” He raised his hands and sighed. “That’s the whole story with Ellen.”

  “I overheard you two,” I blurted out and could have slapped myself for my stupidity. Could I use my brain just one single time? This delicate subject could have been addressed more tactfully.

  Ben stared. “Luca, are you sure you’re not working for the NSA?”

  “It was by accident. I swear I was just going to use the bathroom, and the walls are really thin.”

  “Just talk your way out of this.” He snorted. “Then you heard everything?”

  I nodded guiltily. “Every single word.”

  “Then you also heard me say to Ellen that she had no chance with me, Toby or no Toby?”

  “I heard that,” I admitted.

  “I said that because of you.”

  “What?” A hot jolt rushed down my spine.

  He came closer. “I’d choose you over her any day.” His voice was rough and quiet. “At that moment, I wished you were standing there instead of Ellen. My answer would have been quite different. But let’s drop it. It’s not going to work with us anyway.”

  “Why not?” I held my breath. It wasn’t going to work with us? He had no feelings for me. My heart broke instantaneously, and it hurt so badly.

  Ben gave a tortured laugh. “Luca, this is complicated.”

  “I am capable of grasping complicated matters, if they’re explained properly.” I needed to know what he thought of me, how he felt about me. I needed to understand, in order to be able to move on—one way or the other way.

  “You are so persistent.” He seemed torn up inside. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning.” Ben took an audible breath as if he had to force himself to continue. “Let’s just say, you were a bit distant when we first met. You totally blew me off, and I had zero chance with you from the start.” His grin went crooked. “But then you came to live with us, and I thought this must be fate. Let’s see if she’s really as tough as she pretends to be. Turned out, you were. No matter what I said, you blew me off. But when you got so drunk that first day, you were talking in your confused state about my good looks, my cute dimple, and God knows what else. Thus, I knew you actually liked the way I looked, and that there must have been something else to blame for your negative reaction towards me. So, I started teasing you, because every time I provoked you, you revealed something about yourself in your anger.” He kneaded his shoulder. “I admit, I wanted you. For years, I’ve had my pick of women, and then one came along who didn’t want me. I couldn’t believe it, and I wanted to change that.”

  I looked past him and didn’t know why he was telling me all this stuff in the
first place. His confession was so unnecessary; it just hurt. My temples throbbed. What he was telling me was so incredibly painful. I’d been completely wrong about him. Or had I? Was my first impression of him right after all? Was he nothing but a reckless, selfish jerk? Suddenly I didn’t know what to think of Ben anymore. He’d wanted to use me just to prove something to himself.

  “Hey, wait a minute before you mentally tear me to pieces, I’m not done yet,” he defended himself, and I looked up.

  “You don’t need to say anything else; I get it.” I was doing my best to blink away my tears when I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  “Please let me finish, okay?”

  “Keep talking,” I said after a pause, because his gaze became more and more pleading, even though he could have saved himself the rest.

  “And then you stood in for me and watched Phyllis. That evening we had our first real conversation. I enjoyed talking to you and…”

  “You enjoyed it so much that you basically ran away,” I interrupted him icily.

  He nodded. “I don’t even know why I left. Suddenly, I felt so close to you, and I liked you so much that it scared me. It was overwhelming. I needed to get out of there, to get a grip on my emotions.” Ben sounded bitter. “That same night I went out to a bar, and some random woman kept chatting me up about boring, inane stuff, and all I could think about the whole time was you. It made me realize that I couldn’t go on like this anymore. At some point, I just stood up and slipped out of the bar. And I haven’t met with another woman since that day.”

  “Because of me?” I gasped incredulously. Ben quit going out on the prowl because of me? But that meant… I didn’t dare finish that thought because this would only reawaken my strong feelings for Ben, and that never ended well.